NHL, players’ association concede lockout has harmed the game

Both sides in the continuing NHL lockout remain far apart but one thing has become crystal clear — the league and its player’s association now acknowledge their labour dispute has harmed the game.

“I don’t know what kind of adjective you need to apply to it but certainly when you’re not selling your product you cannot have a positive result after that,” NHL Players’ Association executive director Donald Fehr said Wednesday in an interview with Sportsnet The Fan 590. “I can’t imagine that it is good.”

National Hockey League deputy commissioner Bill Daly also conceded the lockout could have an impact on fans and sponsors.

“I think it’s fair to say it’s a crap shoot,” Daly told Sportsnet The Fan 590 about an hour following Fehr’s appearance. “We’ve tried to be as open and as transparent as possible with our business partners as to what this fight is all about and what we’re trying to accomplish. But there is nobody fooling anybody. Right now we’re not playing hockey. That’s not a good thing for our brand or our sport.”

The lockout enters its 96th day on Thursday and no talks are planned. The NHL locked its players out Sept. 15. All told, 526 games have been cancelled through to Dec. 30. Also scrapped are the Winter Classic scheduled for New Year’s Day in Ann Arbor, Mich., between the Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs, as well as the All-Star game in Columbus, Ohio, on Jan. 27.

Daly confirmed the season will reach the point of no return by mid-January and that more games will be cancelled, likely before Christmas.

“There are a lot of open issues. We are prepared to shut down the industry over a deal that is not right for our owners,” Daly said. “That’s what we are prepared to do.”

Daly insisted there was no specific date on the calendar to cancel the entire season.

“Obviously as we’re moving toward the end of December we have to look realistically as to how many games we can play,” he said. “The commissioner is on record saying that we’re not looking to play a season that is less than 48 games.”

Based on arena availability and how they can compress the schedule, Daly said play has to begin sometime in mid-January for that to happen.

Thursday is also the day when an informal electronic vote by the league’s 750 players will end as to whether they want to authorize their union executive board to have the power to formally file a “disclaimer of interest” with the idea of dissolving their union. If two-thirds of the players give this authority, the executive has until Jan. 2 to go down that path.

Such a move is considered to be the first step to a formal decertification, which essentially means the players could seek legal damages in court from the NHL because the league would be in violation of antitrust laws. Players, however, hope the threat of such of move will force the league to find a settlement rather than risk potentially huge financial penalties from a successful player’s lawsuit.

The NHL in a lawsuit filed in a New York federal court last Friday, indicated it would consider all contracts voided if the players’ union ceased to exist. The league has asked the courts to declare its lockout legal.

Fehr said the players are willing to immediately return to the bargaining table although there are no signs that management is interested in resuming talks based on Daly’s comments earlier this week.

“I’m not sure what a meeting does from our side,” Daly said. “There is nothing left to give. It’s clear Don (Fehr) is aiming towards a deadline showdown.”

Fehr, however, denied any such strategy.

“In terms of a deadline, it’s only the NHL that has been setting deadlines,” Fehr said. “Players have never done that. What could we do? Go on strike? If they see no point in talking and are perfectly happy not to have hockey, there isn’t a lot that we can do.

“When you say there is no purpose to a meeting, I don’t know how you settle anything unless you have a meeting to talk about it … the suggestion is that you’re not interested in resolving it, which is unfortunate and let’s hope it’s not it.”

Fehr conceded that if the players eventually decide they don’t want to be in a union, then there won’t be a union.

“We’ll be living in a different world,” he said. “The owners will have to comply with antitrust laws and the players will have whatever rights they have.”

Fehr said Major League Baseball remains the “most stable” of the four big sports in North America, and it’s the only one without a salary cap as teams handle their own budgets.

“It (baseball) is the only sport that doesn’t have these (lockout) problems,” Fehr said. “You would think that management is supposed to budget (their teams). I think there is a lesson there.

“The fact is that over the last 20 years, we’ve (NHL) had three lockouts. They have been management instigated and management prolonged.”

He said lockouts have been a “well-worn, well-practised and well-honed” tactic for management in the NHL, the NFL and the NBA.

Daly expected players to give their “overwhelming” support for authorizing their executive to consider moving toward “disclaiming interest.”

“I would imagine any other vote ... would be very unexpected to me,” Daly said. “How that shifts the focus and how it changes the dynamics, I suppose we can all speculate on it, but I don’t think it will be anything positive to the process and certainly could prolong any resolution.”